Making $5K a month by August 2015

[Dinho7]

You can do better than this. This is pseudo progress. How long does it take to adjust prices? Surely that's not more than an hours work?

Is a 'slightly better' looking store going to make any real difference? Since you are so short on time you need to focus on the stuff that really matters.



This concerns me. You're building a business on a foundation of sand...

Don't let your next sale determine your energy levels. Your drive has to come from somewhere else. Why are you doing this? What really matters?

You've got 10k tied up in inventory that isn't moving. How much interest have you paid to the credit card company while this inventory gets dusty? Have you considered listing some of it on Amazon or eBay to get some cash flowing? Your debt is an emergency. This isn't the time to be worrying about optimizing your prices and product images, this is the time to light a big fire under your a$$ and get some real progress happening...

If your husband is hitting snooze every morning, move the alarm clock to the other side of the room so he has to get out of bed to turn it off. Why are you up until 1am? If any of that time involves watching television or pointless internet surfing, I suspect you may be doing it wrong? Have you tried going to bed earlier? You may find that you get more done between 4am and 4.30am than you do between 9pm and 1am.

I know you have a young baby, I get that it's hard, but there are two of you there... Surely one of you can get to bed earlier so that you can crush it in the early morning? You don't need more 'controls', you need more motivation, you need more guts and you need less excuses.

All the best.

Mr. B, thanks for your post. The sales is definitely a good source of motivation, although far from the only one. I don't think the motivation is our biggest problem. It is finding a schedule that works for both so we can put down enough hours of quality work to do much more than mentioned in the opening post of this thread.

The debt is relatively benign for now. It has 0 % APR until next fall, so we have not incurred any interest yet. But it is no reason to slack. We know that the debt eventually has to be paid back, and paying 22 % interest is not something that is appealing.

I think you are "spot on" regarding going to sleep earlier and us finding a way to allow our partner to work in peace. I have been trying to go to sleep by midnight every day so I can wake up at 7 and start working at 8 before the baby wakes up around noon. The days I wake up early I get a lot done. The days I sleep in due to going to bed too late, the productivity level is embarrassing.

My wife convinced me to take Dec 24 and Dec 25 off from work because of Christmas, so tomorrow there is no excused to get a lot of work done. I will use your comment as a kick in the butt to get a lot of important tasks done.

 

[Birdie]

You can do better than this. This is pseudo progress. How long does it take to adjust prices? Surely that's not more than an hours work?

Is a 'slightly better' looking store going to make any real difference? Since you are so short on time you need to focus on the stuff that really matters.



This concerns me. You're building a business on a foundation of sand...

Don't let your next sale determine your energy levels. Your drive has to come from somewhere else. Why are you doing this? What really matters?

You've got 10k tied up in inventory that isn't moving. How much interest have you paid to the credit card company while this inventory gets dusty? Have you considered listing some of it on Amazon or eBay to get some cash flowing? Your debt is an emergency. This isn't the time to be worrying about optimizing your prices and product images, this is the time to light a big fire under your a$$ and get some real progress happening...

If your husband is hitting snooze every morning, move the alarm clock to the other side of the room so he has to get out of bed to turn it off. Why are you up until 1am? If any of that time involves watching television or pointless internet surfing, I suspect you may be doing it wrong? Have you tried going to bed earlier? You may find that you get more done between 4am and 4.30am than you do between 9pm and 1am.

I know you have a young baby, I get that it's hard, but there are two of you there... Surely one of you can get to bed earlier so that you can crush it in the early morning? You don't need more 'controls', you need more motivation, you need more guts and you need less excuses.

All the best.

We have taken great care in having a good working inventory system. Everything is accounted for, bagged, tagged and stored in a warehouse manner. This helps us find and fulfill orders faster and easier.

Part of the reason we took so long is because building all this structure took time. However, dusty inventory sitting everywhere is burning money. We also have a small baby who loves to play with the inventory, so we take care to keep it away from him. Stains, scratches or dust is burned money because we cannot give low quality inventory to our customers.

We are aware that the first impression matters, we had trouble with this in our first business venture. People would not re-subscribe because our product wasn't high quality and we handled it poorly. We learned a lot from this.

 

[Birdie]

Regarding selling on eBay... We have been selling everything we have to pay our bills.

I did suggest listing our inventory on eBay to the husband, but he said it would be better to focus our efforts on our own website instead, where there is no 10% fee plus PayPal fee and we have higher profit margin and less competition.

We have approximately 160 different products... We are readjusting to just our best-selling items and looking for what is most profitable. We recently got rid of $700 worth of inventory because it wasn't working.

I hope this helps answer your question about eBay.

 

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[Birdie]

Mr. B, thanks for your post. The sales is definitely a good source of motivation, although far from the only one. I don't think the motivation is our biggest problem. It is finding a schedule that works for both so we can put down enough hours of quality work to do much more than mentioned in the opening post of this thread.

The debt is relatively benign for now. It has 0 % APR until next fall, so we have not incurred any interest yet. But it is no reason to slack. We know that the debt eventually has to be paid back, and paying 22 % interest is not something that is appealing.

I think you are "spot on" regarding going to sleep earlier and us finding a way to allow our partner to work in peace. I have been trying to go to sleep by midnight every day so I can wake up at 7 and start working at 8 before the baby wakes up around noon. The days I wake up early I get a lot done. The days I sleep in due to going to bed too late, the productivity level is embarrassing.

My wife convinced me to take Dec 24 and Dec 25 off from work because of Christmas, so tomorrow there is no excused to get a lot of work done. I will use your comment as a kick in the butt to get a lot of important tasks done.

I was actually concerned about taking time off during holidays after I read the Christmas thread. They have a very important point about having an edge working while everyone else takes time off.

I guess there was a very emotional factor being a first time mom and having your baby's first Christmas and our first Christmas together as a family that made me draw a line for the 24th and 25th. I don't know if this is a mistake, but I know that years from now I won't regret my decision to put family first, especially when I explain this to my son when he is older.

I might be wrong in this mindset, but I wanted this Christmas to be super special.

 

[Mr.B]

Do you drink coffee in the morning?

I drink it all day... Usually have four or five cups of good coffee between when I wake up (6 or 7am) until my last one at 4pm.

If I'm planning on working late (>3am) I'll have another at 9pm, but that's pretty rare these days.

Glad to hear you are making progress. What's the next most important thing you need to focus on?

 

[Lee Belcher]

Damn your spending far too much!!

Don't take this personally but if your in debt and trying to get your business of the ground why on earth are you spending money on "clothing, appliances, two phones?, a car obviously on finance etc"

Pump that money into your business, spend the $100 you would of spent on a restaurant visit and plough it into advertising or pay some of that debt off.

I am really concerned as your obviously extremely keen for the success but at the same time you have the thought of "liquidating everything" in the back of your mind. This obviously expresses's a lack of confidence and this lack of confidence could and will severely effect your productivity.

I have no idea on the products your trying to sell which leaves me unable to help suggest ways to market the site, other venues to sell the product etc...

But stop spending so much dough!!!

Hello WorldImperator,

Is it really expensive? Compared to my friends and people I have talked to in the same situation, $3k/mo for a couple with a baby doesn't seem much. Maybe I am wrong?

Here is a break-down of our expenses:
Condo maintenance fee + insurance/repairs $300
Car payment - $250
Car insurance - $150
Gas - $150
Cable & internet - $80
2 x Cellphone plans - $90
Electricity - $120
Groceries - $600
Baby supplies - $200
Health insurance/expenses - $100

All this equates to around $2k. Factor in things like clothing, entertainment, car repairs, contact lenses, appliances for the house, an odd restaurant visit ++ and you reach $3k in no time.

I feel like we are already living a modest life. Most of these expenses cannot be eliminated, or hardly reduced (could cut down on groceries a bit, I guess).

Please let me know what you think. Interesting to get different opinions on this.

 

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[Dinho7]

Hey Lee, thanks for your post! Very interesting that you all seem to mean that we are spending too much. The thought really never crossed my mind since I thought we were already spending quite little, but I guess we will have to sit down and re-evaluate our spending.

The thing is that we just recently took on this debt as a business investment, and it does not have to be repaid until August-November 2015. I believe in my own abilities and I am not feeling the heat as much as my wife does, although it certainly affects me when I see her worried about it. For now, I am calm and positive. If it is status quo in closer to the summer I will be more worried, but even then we have tons of other business ideas, and we will both have business degrees that will surely make us at least $60k a year combined if absolutely necessary (last resort).

PS! Sharing our business idea to get feedback would be AMAZING, but also quite risky since there are so many bright entrepreneurs here. I know that ideas are worth little and that execution is king and so on, but I do not feel comfortable sharing details of our ventures on here. I do appreciate you showing willingness to help out, though!

 

[Birdie]

I can't believe you're hiring a web developer with so few sales.

Does your site look like childish garbage? Ditch it and go to shopify and one of their free themes until you get 100k in sales.

Go to ebay. Ebays listings are chronological. You will get a lot of people viewing your listing as the expiration rolls around. No SEO needed. No PPC needed. Google listing tactics to figure out the best timing.

When you get some sales going buy some PPC traffic to your site and measure success. If your campaign is successful run with it. If not come up with a theory of why and test what you can change yourself for free. Change your targeting. Change your copy. Change your keywords.

Test test test. Don't hire some designer/developer unless you have a strong theory about why their work is going to make you more money.

Paying someone to make changes without having data + a theory of WHY a change will make you more money will only lead to empty pockets.

99% of all designers and developers I have met don't give a rip about your success as a business.

Hi bradj,

I actually "hired" the developer of the theme we are using for prestashop. We previously have paid $10 an hour for developers that had no clue.

Our shop looks quite good, I believe. It looks like a high-end shop, with high-end products. I tried to keep it as clean as possible, focusing on our best products. We are giving a lot of value to our customers.

The developer is just used to fix small bugs- images not displaying, some links not working, that we cannot fix ourselves with out very intermediate html and css level.

I told the developer to invoice me but he hasn't... So unreliable when it comes to showing up. Like you guys said, developers don't really care about your business or bottom line and you have to be giving them incentives constantly.

Anyway, rant over... We have added more products without necessarily increasing our debt, so that is awesome. We had some comments from people who reviewed the site saying "we don't have much".

I take it when a customer says that, they mean "you don't have much of what I am interested in".

So we are now putting more of the products that they are interested on... Finding the "meat" or value versus the filler products that are not adding value.

Progress today:

Him:
-added products (without using capital)
-did research for new products
-shipped an order
-updated finances

Me:
-worked on a banner to advertise. Our campaigns have been largely uneffective so far... I think most of our traffic is just coming from Google. We are working on other possibilities.
We have a permanent banner on a site with 300 unique visitors a day and we have not captured a single sale through there... What could we be missing? I'm going to try a trip wire offer here to see if I can get this mostly male in their 20s audience to purchase.
-worked on analyzing other products- I got 5 new products, while he added 9.

My plan is to focus on expanding to another market by translating to another language. I already have lined up several ways to promote on this new market that could work, I'm just unsure that the prices might be too high for that specific market in Latin america.

This means translating the page AND the 160+ products, descriptions and prices. I just want to focus several days on this once we have a better product offering and I have designed the banners.

I wasted some time vectorizing our logo today, but I guess it had to be done because dinho7 has been asking for this since before Christmas. I hate spending resources on silly things, but I know details are crucial.

I feel like jumping to another project but I am trying to give this project everything I've got. I feel half-passionate about this project and more passionate towards my idea for the next thing in line... I guess it's easy to fall in love with ideas.

 

[Birdie]

The best thing you can do is learn from your mistakes, take a look as to why you weren't ready and put a plan into effect that will get you ready for next holidays.

There are plenty of other opportunities like Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, birthdays, etc. I'm not sure what you are selling but perhaps you could offer items that would make great year round gifts!

I look forward to your next posts!

I think that $3,000/mo is pretty reasonable for three people if you have a mortgage/rent, house payment, utilities, vehicle expenses, insurance and food. It all depends on where you live. Just stay smart.

Thank you Hoogan.

I don't want the idea that we "missed the train" because Christmas has passed make us feel defeated. I know there will be more opportunities too.

Before Christmas, we got an order from a woman that wanted expedited shipping so her gifts would get there on time. We sent out the order in regular speed and I think it was a mistake... You need to give customers what they want.

Dinho7 said we didn't have that option back then. I finally talked him into adding the option.

I just hope our customer wasn't disillusioned from our site by this huge detail.... i wonder if she got her stuff on time (no way to know, unfortunately) and if she will be a repeat customer or if we lost her over this.

Anyway, it's a small thought, but an important one to consider. We now offer the option of expedited shipping.

We don't have delays fulfilling orders, because we have worked on being organized with our inventory system and the back-end of prestashop IS working for us. The only issue is when adding products.


An added thought... Just like hoogan said, it depends on where you live. We don't live in an expensive city like New York, but the cost of living in Florida is higher than the middle of the country, for example.

About our expenses:

You may notice we don't pay rent or mortgage we own our home. I haven't bought clothes for over a year (before my pregnancy). Our car loan is break-even at this point... It depreciated heavily on the first two years but now we are at a $10k loan with $10k car value. We are keeping the car for a long time unless the business goes really well. I considered trading it but it's not a good financial decision. We own a sort of fuel efficient car and we don't drive much.

I think the reason why our expenses have been so high is because we travel twice to four times a year. Dinho7 is from Europe and I am from Latin America. He goes there twice a year and so do I. Plane ticket are huge expenses. We have decided not to travel until we have positive cash flow. To be honest, it's like living a luxurious life without having the budget for it. I understand dinho7 cares a ton about seeing his family, but it places a financial burdain on us to do this trips. He used to play poker professionally before and that's how we afforded trips and our monthly expenses. It also gave us the opportunity to buy our own place. He has now quit that to focus solely on this project.

Remember though, we are a family of 3... Babies have needs. I have tried to keep that budget to a minimum and we do not have hospital bills, every medical expense has been paid. I do not have health insurance. We had to pay for childbirth (crazy expensive), and child gear. I did enormous amount of research and kept it to a minimum.

I'm gonna make an effort to trim out budget, but I would need to post it to get more ideas. I am constantly calling up cable companies and car insurance companies to get our quotes down. Our cellphones are the cheapest unlimited plans you could have. We own our phones outright and they were bought used. I refinanced our car loan to have 3% interest vs 8% before. I've downsized unused baby items, and I sell baby gear/clothes as he grows out of it.

Every time I see a bank fee by mistake or overdraft, I call to have it forgiven and 98% of the time, they waive it. I don't recommend capital one, though... Bloodsucking bank.

I keep an eagle eye on most our expenses.

I'm thankful for the life we have, even if we are in serious debt right now. I have a roof over my head and I can feed my baby, which are the top priorities to me.

Those are some of my thoughts on the budget.

 

[Birdie]

I can't believe you're hiring a web developer with so few sales.

Does your site look like childish garbage? Ditch it and go to shopify and one of their free themes until you get 100k in sales.

Go to ebay. Ebays listings are chronological. You will get a lot of people viewing your listing as the expiration rolls around. No SEO needed. No PPC needed. Google listing tactics to figure out the best timing.

When you get some sales going buy some PPC traffic to your site and measure success. If your campaign is successful run with it. If not come up with a theory of why and test what you can change yourself for free. Change your targeting. Change your copy. Change your keywords.

Test test test. Don't hire some designer/developer unless you have a strong theory about why their work is going to make you more money.

Paying someone to make changes without having data + a theory of WHY a change will make you more money will only lead to empty pockets.

99% of all designers and developers I have met don't give a rip about your success as a business.

Thank you, BradJ.

We do have a pay per click marketing campaign going on. I don't know how effective it has been... Perhaps dinho7 can expand on that.

 

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[Dinho7]

Couldn't agree more with your post. The reluctance to eBay is my mistake, but I have finally realized that we need to use other channels to sell while we are building our brand and driving traffic to our store, which can take time. Hopefully I have been able to list at least a few products today to get the ball rolling.

The expanding idea and lack of passion is something that my wife has to stand for, and I hope your comments help with her mindset. Instead of spending countless of hours to translate the page and products, marketing and educating a whole new and untested market etc., she could instead take care of the baby only from noon to 4 PM so I can get a full day's work for a change (baby wakes up at 12 anyway). And instead of being worried and negative, start thinking about how we can fix the problems and make this work. It is counter-productive to keep me awake for hours in the night dwelling about our problems, when the only thing we need right now is at least one of us to wake up early to work hard and smart on the project.

 

[MajeStyle]

This sounds like a dead project already: I mean, this is WAY too expensive for what you can really afford right now. Getting a job to finance bige project is the best way to go IMHO

 

[MajeStyle]

Good job: if you read the book, just remember this one thing.
A solution that makes you stay "1 or 2 months/salary/selling/something away from bankrupcy" cant' be a good one.
You shouldn't be struggling that much, especially as long as you are not alone and with a child. Poker is a good way to make money in an indipendent and self organized way, I've played very much myself. Problem is, it's getting harder and harder to win it, and if you want to earn a decent amount you need to grind 8-10 h/day, or play very high stakes, wich seems a very bad idea considering your bankroll.

 

[MajeStyle]

Make hundreds of phone calls to people you know and don't know; tell them about your site and have them visit and buy it now, here, today!

• Go out in the streets and drop 4000 paper flyers per week in peoples mailboxes saying "WE HAVE A COOL NEW WEBSHOP, CHECK IT OUT". Printing flyers is cheap and more efficient than stupid banner ads that are simply hidden by everyones adblock.
• Ring random doorbells (100 per day) selling your products face to face --> Why not?? I dont know your products but I can imagine some of them are attractive if they are demonstrated
• Call everyone you know that has a facebook or twitter account, and DIRECTLY ASK THEM to post 1 tweet or fb-post about your site here and now. Just ASK THEM and they'll do it! "Hey all, a friend of mine has a crazy webshop. Visit it PLEAAAAAAAAASE". Everyone is bored on FB 24/7 and they read status updates of their so called friends!!
• Make a special effort to call friends who have >1000 followers on twitter. Give them a shareable coupon for example?

This is the old fashioned way to sell: it could work (I hear magic stuff about USA), but there are way better ways to market and sell products, especially in online business. This solution is the most expensive in terms of cost and labour, and even if you get an incredible conversion of 10%, you will still be highly dependant on your daily sweat to get something done, (don't get me wrong, daily efforts are necessary, IMHO in a different way).

Ever heard about Al Ries? Gary Halbert? If not, shame on you, go read their websites.

Point is, people are wearing iron shields when you knock their doors and ring their phones: they know how to defend vs you trying to sell them something.

The solution is apparently absurd: don try to sell them something, try to inform them about what happens in the sector you are working. Give examples of what you do different from other companies, tell them wich problem you are solving and how. Poeple aren't willing to spend money on products, they want to spend money (big money), for SOLUTIONS.

You can open a blog to give news about things you are selling and make the coustumer sensible about the competititors and why they make wrong (it will be implicite that you are doin' it right).

Another thing: don't ever ever say you are the "best" in something. This creates a lot of confusion about brand positioning.

Enjoy the ride!

 

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[tafy]

I agree with cold selling B2B but never B2C, It's illegal here to cold call homes without checking that they are not on the "list". 90% of people are on the list as cold calls are really a nuisance.

 

[SJVC]

@miked_d I agree, in fat a lot of people start out on Amazon/eBay to launch their brands and then progress to there on own websites

 

[Birdie]

I don't know much about ecommerce either, but I read your story with high interest. Here's some of the stuff you said you've been working on:




Now, as I told you, I'm no expert on how to run a business like yours, but this really strikes me:

Where and when are you SELLING? You seem to just sit and tob, waiting for a wild sale to appear??!!!

Nothing is more important than getting people to your website and closing sales. It is the simple highest priority ON EVERY DAY that you run your business.

You URGENTLY need more customers and more sales, so here's what I would be doing from 8AM till 18PM EVERY DAY:

• Make hundreds of phone calls to people you know and don't know; tell them about your site and have them visit and buy it now, here, today!
• Go out in the streets and drop 4000 paper flyers per week in peoples mailboxes saying "WE HAVE A COOL NEW WEBSHOP, CHECK IT OUT". Printing flyers is cheap and more efficient than stupid banner ads that are simply hidden by everyones adblock.
• Ring random doorbells (100 per day) selling your products face to face --> Why not?? I dont know your products but I can imagine some of them are attractive if they are demonstrated
• Call everyone you know that has a facebook or twitter account, and DIRECTLY ASK THEM to post 1 tweet or fb-post about your site here and now. Just ASK THEM and they'll do it! "Hey all, a friend of mine has a crazy webshop. Visit it PLEAAAAAAAAASE". Everyone is bored on FB 24/7 and they read status updates of their so called friends!!
• Make a special effort to call friends who have >1000 followers on twitter. Give them a shareable coupon for example?

I know this means making LOCAL use of your ONLINE webshop, but sales are sales, whereever they come from.

All of this is ACTIVELY PERSUEING CONCRETE SALES, instead of simply PASSIVELY waiting for them. Jeff Bezos can passively wait. You guys CAN'T.

I would suggest splitting up. Have your husband do the SELLING, the hustling, the hunting -- 10 hours a day.
You (the wife) can be support and handle shipping etc, and make more calls in every spare minute that you have

In order for me to use my Facebook contacts, I would need to translate the page, which is in my to-do list already.
Dinho has already contacted people with big audiences, like you mentioned about twitter (but alternate sites that are more geared towards our target market).
We both alternate tasks, and do what is needed. When I make sales, I take care of everything. When we make sales in our site, we both work on an efficient manner to ship the package (we have a system that uses both of our strenghts...)

I found that ebay is not necessarily the audience we want... we would be selling at a loss there. Ebay is great for selling used stuff, but not necesarily for what we are selling. Regardless, the stuff is listed so we might end up getting sales after all.

 

[MajeStyle]

I will be honest with you, I cant see this working with poker...Good jov for all the rest, keep going!

 

[Birdie]

I will be honest with you, I cant see this working with poker...Good jov for all the rest, keep going!

The game in poker is definitely getting tougher. If Dinho can't make it on this, he could get any dayjob. He is graduating with a business degree in May but he can take part-time or full-time because he only has one class left starting January.

This would be only to support ourselves, since we want the business to stand on its own.

 

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[Mr.B]

Poker is really a bitch, the more you play it when you are in absolute need of money, the more you stress out and loose (get bluffed etc..). Think carefully about it.

I don't know anything about playing poker professionally, but this makes a lot of sense.

A bit like trying to make sales when you desperately need to make a sale... it never works.

@Birdie and @Dinho7 - I'm glad you guys have a plan now

 

[Dinho7]

@MajeStyle: I share your concerns about stress and bankroll. Stress and the emotional swings were two of the reasons that I quit about a year ago (along with diminishing returns). But, I have played professionally for 5 years so I know how to cope with stress and feelings when less experienced players would tilt. Regarding the bankroll, you are right about the risks of having a small bankroll. However, my goal is to find a great rakeback deal that pays out frequently to reduce the risk. There have always been great deals for new players (75%+) on some networks. I have lost my investment just once out of around ten times with this strategy. It is far from optimal, but it's a risk I am willing to take.

Getting a day job would KILL this project that I still believe in. We did not do four months of preparation work just in order to put our guns down and surrender after just three weeks of operation. We will make this work.

So my goal now is to work about 4 hours on the poker (3 hours playing + 1 hour studying) and 4 hours on the business per day. My wife would also help some hours a day with fulfilling orders, take product pictures, assist with marketing etc. But she is going to be a full-time student this semester, so I really want to get some money in to make her feel more relaxed and give her the time she needs for herself and for the baby.

I am going to use today to scout out a good poker deal and try to get back in the game tomorrow.

We are in a tough spot now, thanks to ourselves, but 2015 is going to be the best year we have ever lived!

 

[Dinho7]

Thats bullshit.

This is how I see it:
Sleep 7-8 hours.
A day job to pay the bills would mean 8 hours of work.
Commute, getting ready etc. would maybe take an hour.
Cook, clean and regular house chores could add up to an hour.
I will also study part-time in the upcoming semester where I have to go to school twice a week.
My wife will be a full-time student, which means I need to take care of the baby for several hours per day.
This would leave me with approximately 4 hours a day to be with my family, AND run the business.

I don't think the business project can succeed with me only working on it in the weekends. Part of the problem so far is that we have not been able to put in enough hours of quality work to make it grow. Cutting down that time to a fraction will not help.

Perhaps you have another (constructive) opinion on this?

For now, it is really an actual option because I am not legally allowed to work in the US until May. So for now I will work on the business from about 8 to 12, then try to make enough to cover the bills by playing poker from 1 to 5.

Here is a suggestion which, although I haven't actually tried it myself, is a method of making money that works well. This has to do with arbritrage between Amazon and eBay. Look for a highly discounted item on Amazon and post an ad on eBay. Though I know people who do it without ordering it for themsleves first(ordering it as a gift instead) it is better if you order it to your address first and then ship it. Never mind the extra 1-2 days- at least your account will be safe as Amazon may not like what you're doing(some customers may not either). If you do this on a regular basis you can take care of your expenses while you work on you main project. I wouldn't consider it for a long-term business but you can earn some quick cash for those expenses.

Cool idea. Definitely something to look into. Shipping it directly should not be a problem if it is sent like a gift, since I assume that the receipt is not included? I heard an intriguing episode on the SPI podcast about a couple making six figures a year on buying discounted items in stores a while ago. Looks like a lot of people are doing this now (the episode was the most popular in 2014).

 

[Bila]

Wish you the best .... The number one lesson i learned ....get rid of the mental blocks....push your own bouandaries ....everything will be a piece of cake after....one mental block i see in your situation is that you think that your business needs 2 full time employees ....NO, it doesnt.

 

[Birdie]

Is he playing cash game or tournaments? Wich stakes? The #1 rule in poker is bankroll management. You cannot play in a table more than 2% of your total bankroll to avoid getting crushed by variance. Since u are somehow broke, I don't see how you can borrow a capital from your business and invest it in poker in exchange of your time and effort.

To start making decent money at poker (something that can compare to daily joobs) you need to play NL25 (or tournaments with 25 ABI). You NEED 100 buy ins to avoid variance and play it like it's meant to be.

100*25= 2500 $.

I can't see this working. You can get a way more profitable dayjob FOR FREE.

Poker is really a bitch, the more you play it when you are in absolute need of money, the more you stress out and loose (get bluffed etc..). Think carefully about it.

Hi MajeStyle,

Sorry about not replying yesterday. I was busy making and fulfilling sales through multiple sites (our own, ebay and others)

We have enough bankroll for Dinho to play on NL25 cash games and we have enough to cover bills until April (about $7500, need to use this wisely, plus some extra income). We did projections for the business, and repayment of our loans.

• With our business, we have sold 12 items for this month. If we manage to bump up to 50 to 100 items sold, then we can pay ourselves $1000 and repay minimum loans.
  
• By May, with 250 items, we would be able to pay ourselves $3000, still repaying the minimum on the loans.
• We will have repaid all $18K of business loans by December 2015, selling 600 items per month, snowballing the debt (increased payments) towards the end and still paying ourselves.

We could have the loans repaid faster if we don't take a salary so early, which would mean Dinho7 working in the poker longer, which is what he is going to do. Depending on his earnings, we would be able to repay the loans faster.

I stress about repaying the loans, but I realized this is a mentality that will get us nowhere. I am instead focusing on bumping up the sales and directing traffic to our own site.

 

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[Birdie]

I did not mean to say you should break any of their rules. External links are generally a no-no but there are always exceptions. I believe eBay allows a link on your "about me" page. There are no rules against you including a flier for your website when shipping out sales. You are allowed to include your brand name in the listing. Example - Bird Houses by Birdie Inc.

Hi Miked_d,

I have thought about this. We can include our own flyer to our site with a discount code for our sales on ebay/amazon, I'll make one.

I have also thought about paying the $15 a month for an ebay store front, making us look more professional. I'm wondering if this is worth it at all. I think it might be better to just list and focus on alternative sites.

 

[Birdie]

I agree with @theag , one of you should get a day job to pay the bills.
when i started my business i worked full time ( single mother of a little one as well ) then start at 3:30 pm to work on my business, at 5:30 go pick up little one, have quality time with him, 8:00 pm work again until 11:00.
I did that for a year....crazy but doable.

I really appreciate your story, Bila. I honestly understand how though it is to be a single mom... I'm just worried about burning myself out on the process. It might seem like I am not doing much, but I am. I slept 3 hours or less for 9 months. The sleep deprivation really got to me... I just don't know how to justify myself without sounding like I am whining, so I am not going to list all the stuff I do as a mother.

Instead, I am just going to say that we carefully considered me putting off school for some time so I can focus on the business or take a job. We decided against this for multiple reasons. I don't care that much about a degree, but I know that I need to finish it already. Putting it off is not going to make matters better. I also have student loans (not a crazy amount), so it is not in my best interest to NOT finish the degree and have to start repaying right now. My school is not expensive, anyway... it's probably the cheapest alternative in my state.

Theag suggested that I take a job and put my child on daycare. I am against this for many reasons. Mainly because the childcare cost alone would suck up 1/3 of my salary, and put more strain on us. It's not gonna help pay down our loans and it will just make both my child and me miserable. I have considered all alternatives. I would also need to quit school, unless I want to work Monday through Saturday and then do school on Sunday only to do it all over again next week. The pure definition of the rat race, and still living with debt.

Actually, Dinho can work legally in the U.S., he would need to apply for an OPT permit asking the school for permission, which he will have to do eventually anyway.

 

[Birdie]

I read most of the posts on this thread.

If this is what you really want to do for an income you can surely make it happen. But like many others have mentioned, get a job first(I read the post where you've agreed to it ). A regular income from a job is a great motivator for a second income. Besides, if you have a job that requires you to be present in the office at 8 am in the morning, you will stop getting up late.

If you don't want to do a regular job in an office, take up an online job. There are plenty of regular jobs available on freelancing sites including project managers, assistants and writers. That will help you with your monthly expenses. Once your fixed expenses are taken care of, you will be be able to focus on your business better.

Here is a suggestion which, although I haven't actually tried it myself, is a method of making money that works well. This has to do with arbritrage between Amazon and eBay. Look for a highly discounted item on Amazon and post an ad on eBay. Though I know people who do it without ordering it for themsleves first(ordering it as a gift instead) it is better if you order it to your address first and then ship it. Never mind the extra 1-2 days- at least your account will be safe as Amazon may not like what you're doing(some customers may not either). If you do this on a regular basis you can take care of your expenses while you work on you main project. I wouldn't consider it for a long-term business but you can earn some quick cash for those expenses.

Hi Sean P,

Dinho actually did freelance work for some time. He got paid more than the average freelancer gets. It just doesn't pay as well as the poker does, unfortunately.

Also, wouldn't it be better to just import from China? I thought that would give better margins than reselling already existing stuff, and it is not really adding any value to the customer. If someone is smart enough to search online for the item, surely they can price compare with other sites? I would think this puts you at a disadvantage if you are not even offering a better price. There is always that person who will pay a premium for it, but then it's just sheer luck and not really bringing any value. I might be wrong about my whole way of thinking, though.

 

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[Birdie]

Well, sounds pretty easy to me.

Get a job to pay the bills (if you cant legally work, you and your wife switch roles. she works, you take care of the kid), sleep 2 hours less, dont go to university (both of you, because why should you?? Its useless if you want to be entrepreneur. read some books instead.), let your wife take care of your kid and work on the business every free minute of the day. You can spend time with your family when the business makes enough money so you can quit a job. We are talking about maybe 1 year max of living like this, then you should be able to quit your job if your business doesnt suck.

If you cant make that sacrifice you wont be successful.

Everything else is just excuses.

So, how bad do you want it?

Hi Theag,

I really appreciate your input. Love how direct you are

We actually have a though year ahead of us regardless. With the plan we have made, we will probably have very little family time, we will both be stressed out of our minds, and Dinho will have the equivalent of more than a dayjob.

If you know anything about poker, you understand how much of a toll it takes on you. I tried following on Dinho's footsteps, and failed. You need a very cool mind to not let it get to you... it's a very intense and draining 3-4 hours where he has 4 poker tables open at once, and where he is constantly deciding what to do with $100 on each table. The fact that he doesn't let our financial strain affect him whilst making this decisions is amazing. I honestly do not understand how he doesn't tilt, because I know I would. In all honesty, poker is not the easy way out. Dinho will need to study in order to keep being profitable and have the right mindset.

He has set a goal for himself that does not put too much pressure, otherwise he would tilt and start making -EV decisions.

Going back to the poker IS a sacrifice. There is a reason why he quit it in the first place.

 

[Sean P]

Hi Sean P,

Also, wouldn't it be better to just import from China?

That is indeed a better way and is also more long term - the method that I briefly described was just for some quick funds to tide over immediate expenses. If you import from China(but why only China?) you need to carry out a detailed analysis of your samples as well as know everything about your supplier. I was just reading Flyleaf's thread and he is right when he says that the best dropshippers my not even realize that they are dropshipping i.e. companies that advertise themselves as dropshippers take huge margins and already know about online ecommerce entrepreneurs and may not be ready to sacrifice their margins for your profits.

But if you do locate manufacturers who have the ability to dispatch items that are ordered and follow the "dropshipping process" for you then you have winners who will help you scale up in the long run, once you have tested out your process and started making profits. I was reading somewhere about 2 dropshippers who make at least 1 trip in a year to China to survey the market and tie up deals for dropshipping products in their niches.

 

[Dinho7]

I hope you dont get a burnout working that much.

The poker part I wont even comment because its just SO stupid in your financial state.

That is indeed a better way and is also more long term - the method that I briefly described was just for some quick funds to tide over immediate expenses. If you import from China(but why only China?) you need to carry out a detailed analysis of your samples as well as know everything about your supplier. I was just reading Flyleaf's thread and he is right when he says that the best dropshippers my not even realize that they are dropshipping i.e. companies that advertise themselves as dropshippers take huge margins and already know about online ecommerce entrepreneurs and may not be ready to sacrifice their margins for your profits.

But if you do locate manufacturers who have the ability to dispatch items that are ordered and follow the "dropshipping process" for you then you have winners who will help you scale up in the long run, once you have tested out your process and started making profits. I was reading somewhere about 2 dropshippers who make at least 1 trip in a year to China to survey the market and tie up deals for dropshipping products in their niches.

We did a test run by ordering items from China about 2 months ago. 1/3 of the stuff we ordered was slightly acceptable. The rest was just junk that went straight to the garbage. There really is SO many suppliers out there... I think the only way to go is to do private label and just take your time with your supplier. I realized there is simply no way to rush things with them.

 

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